Just Stop Talking

I have recently chosen to not work with a new salesperson from a vendor that I’ve worked with for years. Why? They wouldn’t stop talking. As much as I’d like to learn more about you to develop a long term sales relationship, if you’re looking to sell to me, or anyone, you’ve got a lesson you’ll need to learn: just. stop. talking.

Sales aren’t successful based on how much product knowledge you have, nor based on how much experience you have. Sales are made based on how well you understand my problem. If you don’t know your products well, call me back with a solution based on my needs after doing some research internally. If you don’t have experience, that can be overcome easily by inviting an honest dialogue. If you don’t stop talking, you don’t know me, my company, or my challenges. Without knowledge of my challenges, you have no basis upon which to recommend your products.

Shut up. Yes, that’s the technique. Shut up. I have seen more salespeople lose deals or carve themselves into unprofitability from nervous speech than from any other sales technique failure. Marketers are especially bad at not shutting up. Once you’ve shared some information that should provoke a reaction, learn to keep your speech turned off (and I say that because it includes text chat, email chains in your inbox, replies on Facebook, and conversations on the phone and in person) and wait for the reaction.

Want to achieve new sales success? Just stop talking.

Author:

Nick Inglis is the Founder/CEO of LeftGen Information Management Group (InformedIM, SolveIM, ClearIM & AgentIM), an expert on enterprise software, and is the author of the AIIM SharePoint Governance Toolkit. Nick has worked with companies as diverse as EY, Shell and Canon. Nick is a keynote speaker on the topics of SharePoint, Information Management and Collaborative Technologies.

Nick Inglis is a Founding Partner at Optismo and Co-Founder of The Information Governance Conference. Nick is a noted expert on enterprise software and is the author of the AIIM SharePoint Governance Toolkit. Nick has traveled the world teaching Fortune 500 Companies, Governments, Organizations, and is a go to keynote speaker for conferences and events. He has worked with companies as diverse as Ernst & Young, Shell and Canon.
Nick is a noted keynote speaker on the topics of SharePoint, Information Management and Collaboration. He is an AIIM SharePoint Master, AIIM Enterprise 2.0 Master, AIIM Enterprise Content Management Specialist, Inbound Marketing Certified Professional. With all of this, it is his highest honor in being the proud father of Conor Atom Inglis. Connect with Nick at http://www.nickinglis.com.

3 comments on “Just Stop Talking”

Did you just wrote about here or did you inform the “new sales people” that you have stopped speaking to? Are you a sales person? If the answer is yes? Why not to share your wisdom with the young new sales people who may not know any better? Do you believe that by just not talking to “new sales people” as if they were not human is going to teach them a lesson? What lesson is that? Do you believe that if they knew better if they had a proper training they would still act the way they do? So perhaps it’s not the new sales people you need to stop speaking to but you may stop doing business with the company? Or instead of writing this insensitive blog (sales is empathy, sales is understanding your audience) you could of done something very positive and as a respected costumer of the company that has those “talking sales people” you could put your effort and energy in writing to their CEO, or whoever is in charge, and kindly ask him to invest in his sales people, and put them through much needed sales training. As he the owner of CEO invests in his sales people, his revenue will grow… Hiring bunch of “sales people” without any previous sales experience and not investing in the right training is a suicide. It ends in a silly blog like yours ” i just stop talking to “the new sales people”? And what did you solve by doing that? Since you want your sales people to provide you with solutions, you need to become part of solution, don’t you agree? Do you believe you took care of the problem? You came up with some great solution for improving your situation? Community situation? Sales challenge that has been there fore years? How did you contribute to the challenge at hand? Because those “new sales people” are still there, but now they feel not so hot about themselves, because you are treating them the way you would never want to be treated yourself? Human empathy 101, Sales 101, more important than listening, to treat others as you wish to be treated yourself. Would you like for someone to just stop speaking with you? YOU have no clue why? By doing that you solved nothing? But here you are trying to sale you knowledge of sales.. by doing the exact same thing, talking, and not just talking, but talking nonsense, that is not helpful to anyone. It shows your lack of empathy and human understanding, which can not make you a good sales person even you your listening skills are amazing, which I believe they are not. Because if you were a great listener you would know that empathy comes before listening in sales and you wouldn’t run your mouth. Talk… talk.. talk..Maybe you need to learn to listen? I really liked this blog … but after today… I may just not come back.. I like when writers have knowledge through listening.. not just talk the talk ..that everyone knows…2 years into sales and you know that you need to listen about 80^, 20 you need to ask questions…empathic questions…